Early modern Europe

Early modern Europe, also referred to as the post-medieval period, is the period of European history between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, roughly the mid 15th century to the late 18th century. Historians variously mark the beginning of the period with the invention of moveable type printing in the 1450s, the Fall of Constantinople and end of the Hundred Years' War in 1453, the end of the Wars of the Roses in 1485, the beginning of the High Renaissance in Italy in the 1490s, the end of the Reconquista and subsequent voyages of Christopher Columbus to the Americas in 1492, or the start of the Protestant Reformation in 1517. The precise dates of its end point also vary and are usually linked with either the start of the French Revolution in 1789 or with the more vaguely defined beginning of the Industrial Revolution in late 18th century England.

Some of the more notable trends and events of the early modern period included the first circumnavigation of the Earth, the establishment of regular European contact with the Americas and South and East Asia and the European colonization of the Americas. The Protestant Reformation and the religious conflicts it provoked (including the French Wars of Religion and the Thirty Years' War), greatly altered the religious balance of Christendom, creating a formidable new opposition to the dominance of the Catholic Church, especially in Northern Europe.

Modern science emerged during the 17th century and was followed by increasingly rapid technological progress, as well as the establishment of secularized civic politics, law courts and the nation state. Capitalist economies began to develop in a nascent form, first in the Low Countries, and later in France, Germany and England. The period is often associated with the rise and dominance of the economic theory of mercantilism and the decline and eventual disappearance (at least in Western Europe) of feudalism and serfdom. The ensuing rise of global systems of international economic, cultural and intellectual exchange played an important role in the development of capitalism and represents an identifiable early phase of globalization. The five great powers of Europe that emerged by the end of the 18th century - Austria, France, Prussia, Russia, and the United Kingdom - formed the Concert of Europe that dominated European politics in the 19th century and up to World War I.